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After Standing Rock, protesting pipelines can get you a decade in prison and $100K in fines
Cherri Foytlin and her fellow protestors spent much of last summer suspended 35-feet in the air in “sky pods” tied to cypress trees. They were hoping to block the Bayou Bridge Pipeline from running through their part of Louisiana.
At the time, Energy Transfer Partners was building the pipeline to move oil between Texas and St. James Parish in southern Louisiana, crisscrossing through the Atchafalaya Basin, one of the largest swamps in the country. Foytlin and others with the group L’Eau Est La Vie (“Water Is Life”) set up wooden platforms between trees along the proposed path of the pipeline. The construction crew couldn’t build the pipeline with a protestor dangling above.
Though the protesters were on private land with the landowner’s permission, some were eventually arrested by St. Martin’s Parish Sheriff’s deputies in mid August. The pipeline was completed in March, yet Foytlin could still face up to five years in prison and $1,000 in fines.
That’s because Louisiana’s Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, signed HB 727 into law last spring, making trespassing on “critical infrastructure” property a much more serious crime than garden-variety trespassing. What was once a misdemeanor is now a felony. The law takes a broad view of what’s “critical”: pipelines, natural gas plants, and other facilities, as well as property on a proposed pipeline route, even if the pipeline isn’t there yet.
Foytlin is one of at least 16 people in Louisiana who’ve been arrested and charged with felonies under the new law, according to Loyola University law professor Bill Quigley, who’s representing Foytlin. All of them were jailed and had to post bonds, some as high as $20,000 to get out. The district attorney hasn’t officially charged any of them yet, Quigley said.
“These are people saying let’s make sure we have something left for future generations in the most beautiful swamp in the world,” Foytlin said. “And for that we were charged with felonies, we were beaten, we were stepped on, I was choked.” To her, the law allows the state to jail people for unpopular political views. (Messages left with the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office weren’t returned.)
The effort to punish pipeline protestors has spread across states with ample oil and gas reserves in the last two years and, in some cases, has garnered bipartisan support. Besides Louisiana, four other states — Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa — have enacted similar laws after protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline generated national attention and inspired a wave of civil disobedience.
Just last week in Texas, House lawmakers passed a bill that makes interfering with some oil and gas operations makes interfering with operations at oil and gas facilities a third-degree felony — on par with indecent exposure to a child.
Lawmakers in at least seven other states, including Minnesota, Kentucky, and Illinois, are considering similar legislation.
All these efforts have garnered broad support from the oil and gas industry. And many of the bills bear a startling resemblance to model legislation being pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative nonprofit backed by the Koch Brothers.
They have a lot in common. For starters, they heighten penalties for damaging oil and gas infrastructure and for trespassing with the intent to disrupt operations. Some mete out punishments of up to 10 years in prison and $100,000 in fines. Others would penalize organizations that “aid” protesters, making environmental groups liable for the actions of their members.
“This law is unnecessary,” said Elly Page, an attorney with International Center for Not for-Profit Law, a group that has been tracking this legislation around the country. “Trespass is already a criminal offense under the law. Damaging private property is already a criminal offense. These create really egregious penalties for conduct that’s already penalized.”
The forces behind the scenes
By the beginning of 2017, hundreds of protesters at Standing Rock had spent months clashing with law enforcement and private security guards hired by the pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners. Videos of law enforcement blasting protesters with water cannons had gone viral, and the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe filed suit to block the pipeline. Inspired by those protests, a coalition of Native American and environmental activists in Oklahoma announced they planned to stop construction of the Diamond Pipeline, which would carry oil from Cushing, Oklahoma to Tennessee.
That February, a Republican member of Oklahoma’s state House, Representative Mark McBride sponsored a bill raising penalties for trespassers on property with oil and gas infrastructure and holding any “person or entity that compensates or remunerates a person for trespassing” liable. McBride said at the time that the idea for the bill came from protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. When asked how he would define “compensates,” he punted, saying it “would be for the courts to decide.”
Gov. Mary Fallin signed McBride’s bill into law three months later, along with another piece of legislation that created penalties for protesting near facilities considered “critical infrastructure.” Protesters in Oklahoma can now face a fine of up to $1,000 and six months in jail, and organizations that “compensate” them are liable for up to $1 million.
That caught the attention of ALEC. The influential group takes corporate money and drafts ready-made legislation for lobbyists and lawmakers. It has been behind the effort to exempt Big Oil from having to disclose chemicals in fracking fluids and pushed so-called ag-gag laws, which stymie undercover investigations of agricultural operations.
At a national conference organized by ALEC in December 2017, the group’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture task force proposed a model bill titled the “Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.” A few months later, ALEC’s board signed off on the bill, and it soon appeared on the organization’s website. Bills with similar language then began cropping up in state legislatures.
In March 2018, then-Louisiana State Representative Major Thibaut, a Democrat, introduced HB 727, the one that landed Foytlin in jail. That same month, Wyoming and Minnesota passed similar legislation which was later vetoed by their governors.
Oil and gas lobbyists have also been backing legislation penalizing protestors. In state after state, representatives for Big Oil were an overwhelming majority of those testifying and registering as lobbyists in support of the proposals.
This January, a lobbyist working with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers wrote to Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant’s policy advisor promoting legislation “to provide for criminal penalties for those who wilfully and illegally trespass, disrupt, destroy” oil and gas facilities. The lobbyist noted in his email that he was “expecting a bill from Chairman [Angela] Cockerham and Chairman [Sally] Doty,” two members of the state’s legislature representing each side of the aisle. Doty and Cockerham introduced bills that fit his description in the Mississippi House and Senate that week.
The second wave
Environmental advocates who’ve been tracking these anti-protest bills say 2019 has ushered in a second wave of them. And ALEC appears to be cheering them on. In February, as a cold snap gripped the Midwest and Northeast, ALEC’s Grant Kidwell sent an email to members of the group’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force noting that Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, and Wyoming had introduced legislation with similar language to their model bill. “The frigid temperatures brought by the polar vortex this week serve as a reminder of the important [sic] of energy infrastructure,” he wrote. “Thankfully, states have recognized the important [sic] of critical infrastructure and are moving to protect it.”
[Copies of the ALEC newsletter and emails by lobbyists were obtained by Documented, a watchdog group that tracks corporate influence on public policy, and provided to Grist.]
Texas has seen a handful of prominent pipeline fights in recent years, including ones opposing the Trans-Pecos pipeline near the Texas-Mexico border and the southern segment of the Keystone XL pipeline. Environmental groups and landowners are currently trying to stop construction of the Permian Highway pipeline, a 430-mile conduit to move natural gas from West Texas to the Gulf Coast.
The legislation could have a chilling effect on private landowners who’ve played a large role in fighting pipelines in Texas, said Judith McGeary of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, an advocacy group for independent farmers.
Valero has been building a pipeline through McGeary’s 165-acre farm in central Texas. A few weeks ago, McGeary, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, said she found a swastika painted on the pipeline on her property. Suspecting that members of the construction crew were involved, she locked the gates to her farm and demanded that Valero send new workers. McGeary said Valero responded by threatening to sue for up to $500,000 in damages for interfering with construction. (Valero did not respond to a request for comment.)
“This was a horrible experience for us as it was,” she said. “We look at this legislation and they could’ve been threatening to have the sheriff come and pursue us for third degree felonies — for locking the gate for a weekend. It’s an incredible overreach.”
Environmental advocates see a key difference between the states that considered such bills last year and this year. In 2018, the vast majority were Republican-controlled and had significant oil and gas resources. Now the effort is spreading to states run mostly by Democrats, like Illinois, and devoid of large oil and gas deposits, like Kentucky. Illinois, for instance, is considering a bill that would make trespassing on critical infrastructure property a Class 4 felony, in line with obstruction of justice, criminal sexual abuse, and parental kidnapping.
‘Damn it, we’re going to go all in.’
Activists and First Amendment advocates are fighting back. In South Dakota, after Governor Kristi Noem championed bills that prohibit “riot-boosting” and enable the government to collect damages from protesters, the Oglala Sioux Tribe told her she’s “not welcome” on their reservation.
“These are our lands and our water,” the tribe’s president, Julian Bear Runner, wrote in a letter to Noem. “If you do not honor this directive … we will have no choice but to banish you.”
The ACLU has also filed suit challenging South Dakota’s new law on behalf of a handful of environmental and indigenous rights groups. Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney with the ACLU, pointed to one provision that allows the government to collect damages from protesters and use the money to cover the expenses of law enforcement.
“Meaning, essentially, if you protest the pipeline and are held liable under this law, you have to pay damages, and you are in fact funding this thing that you protested,” Eidelman said.
Quigley, the law professor representing Foytlin, said he plans on challenging Louisiana’s law as unconstitutional in federal court. “The law infringes on the First Amendment right to protest by being so vague that it can be used in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner as it was [with Foytlin],” he said.
For her part, Foytlin says such laws won’t deter her or other advocates from protesting pipelines. In fact, they might backfire.
“People will continue to go to prison.” she said. “They think that by upping the punishment they’re going to keep people from protesting, but what will happen is we’re going to do things that are more worth getting the felony. Because now if we’re going to jail, then damn it, we’re going to go all in.”
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After Standing Rock, protesting pipelines can get you a decade in prison and $100K in fines
Company halts controversial Canadian pipeline expansion after fierce opposition.
Now, those lawsuits are here, and that prediction could bite the multinational oil company in the ass.
A treasure trove of documents released Thursday provide new evidence that Shell, like Exxon, has been gaslighting the public for decades. The documents, dating as far back as 1988, foretold “violent and damaging storms,” and said that “it would be tempting for society to wait until then before doing anything.”
At that point, the documents predicted, “a coalition of environmental NGOs brings a class-action suit against the U.S. government and fossil-fuel companies on the grounds of neglecting what scientists (including their own) have been saying for years: that something must be done.” Sound familiar?
When the scientific community began warning that the world could go down in fossil-fueled flames, Shell tried to convince them to take a chill pill, derailing global efforts to curb climate change.
And it gets shadier: This whole time, Shell has known exactly how culpable it is for a warming planet. By the mid ’80s, it had calculated that it was responsible for 4 percent of global carbon emissions.
That means San Francisco, Oakland, and New York now have more ammo for their lawsuits against Shell. The biggest hurdle to their cases wasn’t proving that climate change is a thing — even Big Oil’s lawyers can’t argue that anymore — but that fossil fuel companies can be held legally liable for the damages caused by climate change.
Shell just made that a lot easier.
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Company halts controversial Canadian pipeline expansion after fierce opposition.
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Tagged alo, documents, exxon, first-nations, francisco, pipelines, shell, sound-familiar, thursday
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The oil industry fears Trump’s regulatory rollback could backfire.
ExxonMobil’s Pegasus Pipeline poured more than 200,000 gallons of heavy crude into a neighborhood in Mayflower, Arkansas, in 2013. Twenty-two homes had to be evacuated, and in the aftermath, hundreds of residents complained of nausea, nosebleeds, and respiratory problems.
In 2015, the EPA fined Exxon more than $4 million in penalties over the spill. Separately, a federal pipeline regulator accused the company of violating safety standards and imposed an additional $2 million in fines.
Exxon disputed those punitive damages, arguing that it met legal obligations. On Monday, an appeals court overturned a majority of the violations and fines. According to its decision: “The unfortunate fact of the matter is that, despite adherence to safety guidelines and regulations, oil spills still do occur.”
Exxon, however, was aware of issues with this particular pipeline prior to the Mayflower incident, and an argument can be made that it should have done a better job of planning for an accident. The pipeline was 70 years old at the time of the spill, and Exxon knew it was prone to cracking along its seams. (Pegasus had split open or leaked nearly a dozen times before.)
But you know what they say, “Pipelines will be pipelines.”
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The oil industry fears Trump’s regulatory rollback could backfire.
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Minnesota report: Proposed tar sands oil pipeline would harm tribes.
That’s all kinds of scary. If there’s one place on Earth that would be the worst possible spot for a giant volcanic chain, it’s beneath West Antarctica. Turns out, it’s not a great situation to have a bunch of volcanoes underneath a huge ice sheet.
In a discovery announced earlier this week, a team of researchers discovered dozens of them across a 2,200-mile swath of the frozen continent. Antarctica, if you’re listening, please stop scaring us.
The study that led to the discovery was conceived of by an undergraduate student at the University of Edinburgh, Max Van Wyk de Vries. With a team of researchers, he used radar to look under the ice for evidence of cone-shaped mountains that had disturbed the ice around them. They found 91 previously unknown volcanoes. “We were amazed,” Robert Bingham, one of the study’s authors, told the Guardian.
The worry is that, as in Iceland and Alaska, two regions of active volcanism that were ice-covered until relatively recently, a warming climate could help these Antarctic volcanoes spring to life soon. In a worst-case scenario, the melting ice could release pressure on the volcanoes and trigger eruptions, further destabilizing the ice sheet.
“The big question is: how active are these volcanoes? That is something we need to determine as quickly as possible,” Bingham said.
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Minnesota report: Proposed tar sands oil pipeline would harm tribes.
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Tagged climate-change, news, pipelines, pressure-on-the, robert, solar, university, volcanoes, vries-with
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Here’s why pipeline companies almost always get their way.
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Tagged appalachia, business & technology, climate & energy, ferc, natural gas, news, oil, Ona, pipelines
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Forget aliens — these NASA drones track methane
schmaliens
Forget aliens — these NASA drones track methane
By Liz Coreon 23 Jan 2015commentsShare
Believe it or not, NASA doesn’t just launch scads of money into outer space: The agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) may specialize in Mars Rover technology, but it’s also in the process of adapting its space-worthy sensors to detect methane leaks here on Earth.
The sensors in question were originally developed to help scientists sniff for life on Mars (because, ironically, methane is believed to be a good predictor of life on other planets). Since methane is the second most common greenhouse gas emitted in the U.S., and it makes up 95 percent of the natural gas in our pipelines, any technology that makes it easier to find and eliminate leaks could be hugely beneficial for the planet.
The martian detectors — officially known as tunable laser spectrometers — are one-foot long, hand-held devices that will help utility workers find leaks along natural gas pipelines. JPL is also partnering with Pacific Gas & Electric, a California-based utility, to put the methane sensors into drones. The new technology, according to the utility, is already 1,000 times more powerful than current utility companies’ detection methods. The finished product will be cheaper and easier to use, the scientists reported, just moments prior — we assume — to collectively shouting, “Eureka!”
And here’s where it gets weirder: Fast Company reported that NASA and PGE are testing the technology in a Hollywood-style movie set that looks like fake suburban town, with fake suburban homes, and little fake suburban garages. And, there in the little fake backyards, the scientists track down methane leaks with the handheld sensors. Oh, NASA, you never fail to fill us with awe, admiration, and the bigtime creeps.
This methane detector isn’t the first hand-me-down that NASA has shared with earthling companies. In fact, spacenaut research has already made its way into countless (but if you must count, here are 44 for starters) consumer products, from skin cream to scratch-resistant lenses to your precious memory foam mattress. Why pawn out their brain children so readily? Because, in fact, NASA collects revenue from licensing patents to third parties and partnering with outside organizations. Money!
Despite deploying some Stepford-worthy testing methods, NASA’s super scientists could slow methane from leaking all over the damn place — and we like that a lot. So keep bein’ creepy, NASA. It’s working for all of us.
Source:
HOW THE MARS CURIOSITY ROVER IS NOW… PREVENTING OIL PIPELINE LEAKS VIA DRONE!?
, Fast Company.
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Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it
Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it
17 Nov 2014 6:16 PM
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Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it
A day before the Senate is expected to vote to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, Bloomberg hits us with the (not shocking) news that the oil industry doesn’t need the much-fought-over pipeline anyway.
Turns out, the industry wasn’t holding its breath in expectation of a quick Keystone approval in the first place. Instead, Big Oil went to work finding other ways to get its product to market: According to Canadian analyst Patrick Kenny, railroads will soon be capable of transporting around 700,000 barrels of Alberta tar sands per day (a scary thought), and the industry is planning new and expanded pipelines to carry far more of the goop than the 830,000 barrels-per-day Keystone is designed to handle.
But the fight over Keystone is about more than just oil. Ever since James Hansen, then of NASA, wrote that building the tar-sands pipeline would be “essentially game over” for the stable climate, the (debatable) factuality of that statement ceased to matter. The issue became fiercely political: It was climate activists versus Big Oil.
And while some have questioned the wisdom of that fight, there are many good reasons beyond climate change to fight against the planned pipeline: Last week, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota announced that authorizing the pipeline would tantamount to an act of war.
Perhaps most importantly, the Keystone XL fight has built a climate movement where there was previously none. And symbolic or otherwise, the people in that movement want to win this one.
Clearly, Keystone’s supporters are thinking the same way: The U.S. energy industry doesn’t need Keystone so much anymore, and early claims of prodigious job creation have proven largely inaccurate – yet Republicans remain committed to ramming the project down Americans’ throats.
The good news for climate hawks is that President Obama has hinted that even if the Senate approves the pipeline, he will veto it. A veto would provide further proof that he is committed to the climate, while sending the oil-stained GOP a clear message that it is on the wrong side of this debate — and the wrong side of history.
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Keystone Is ‘Kind of Old News’ for Oil Industry
, Bloomberg.
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Big Oil doesn’t even need Keystone — all the more reason to kill it
Northwest states talk green, invest dirty
EXECUTIVE DISORDER
Northwest states talk green, invest dirty
19 Sep 2014 8:39 PM
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Northwest states talk green, invest dirty
You know those proposed coal terminals and the ramped-up oil-train traffic that many Washingtonians and Oregonians vehemently oppose? You know, the ones that, if they all were to go through, would carry five times the potential climate damage of an approved Keystone XL pipeline?
Well, some investigative reporting from the sustainability think-tank Sightline Institute shows that both Pacific Northwest states are stealthily financing these schemes to place the region at the center of the global carbon trade — even as their leaders lambast them.
Oregon’s climate-conscious Gov. John Kitzhaber publicly disapproved of a major coal export proposal that’s since been denied a crucial permit, and Gov. Inslee of the Evergreen State is sowing the seeds of post-carbon prosperity. Meanwhile, both states’ executive branches have been quietly investing in the climate-threatening infrastructure projects.
From the Sightline Daily post by Eric de Place and Nick Abraham:
The Oregon Investment Council (OIC) and the Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) oversee all public investments made for their respective states. … Normally, once invested, funds are very difficult to track. But private equity funds pitch investors like the OIC and WSIB on specific portfolios of investments, highlighting not only the overarching theme of the investment package but often specific companies. While state funds are combined with other monies, investors have a much more specific idea about where their dollars are going. They can’t claim ignorance about its final destination.
In other words, it allows us to follow the money.
Their financial spelunking revealed some outrageous examples of state money invested in fossil fuel ventures. Here are a few:
The two states have combined to pour $350 million into a fund that’s supporting an oil-by-rail facility sending North Dakota shale oil to West Coast refineries and a project aimed at barging coal down the Columbia river for shipment to Asia.
The Oregon Investment Council has invested hundreds of millions in GSO Capital, which recently bankrolled the purchase of an oil train facility on the Columbia River to the tune of $70 million.
OIC also invests heavily in Blackstone Capital, a company that recently sold $962 million worth of oil tankers to Kinder Morgan, the energy giant never runs out of plans to ship fossil fuels through the Northwest.
WSIB dumped another $250 million in Global Infrastructure Fund II, which invests in pipelines and other fossil fuel transportation projects.
The original article is worth reading if you’re into the nitty gritty details.
There’s really no reason to believe the state governments are deliberately deceiving citizens; it’s probably a case of the governor’s office charged with managing the state not talking to the office down the hall that manages its money.
But the inconsistency will surely irk folks who don’t want dirty freight shipped through their state. Perhaps it’s time for a divestment campaign aimed at state governments.
Source:
How State Public Money Pays for Coal Exports and Oil Trains
, Sightline Daily.
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Business Briefing: Alaska Lawmakers Back Natural Gas Plans
Alaska’s legislature on Monday approved Gov. Sean Parnell’s plan to join four energy companies in moving ahead on plans to build infrastructure to transport and market 35 trillion cubic feet of North Slope gas to be shipped by an 800-mile pipeline to a liquefied natural gas export plant. Visit site – Business Briefing: Alaska Lawmakers Back Natural Gas Plans ; ;Related ArticlesCalifornia’s Thirsting FarmlandNational Briefing | West: California: A Little More Water Will FlowU.S. Delays Final Call on Keystone XL Pipeline ;
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Tagged alaska, business, conocophillips|cop|nyse, gardening, militarum, monterey, pipelines, series
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